A 30-Minute Flowstate "Stack"

We would all like to spend more time in flow.

Flowstate is the cognitive state of Hypofrontality that enables extreme athletes to flirt with death, artists to draw inspiration from that great bottomless well of human cleverness, and the religious to experience a visceral fellowship and connection to something divine. If you’ve ever faced near-certain death and experienced a vivid slowing down of time in concert with a heightened sense of things while your life flashed before your eyes you’ve experienced flowstate — maybe it even saved your life.

How much more productive and happy would that make us? If you’re not lucky enough to live in a tiki hut next to a beach where you can go surfing daily I’ll suggest spending a little bit of time doing a daily flow practice.

Work can be counter-intuitive to flow; work often involves rote, repeated tasks that are more monotonous than challenging, and often in business we don’t get immediate (or instantaneous) feedback on our performance. It takes weeks, months, or years. Thus I would suggest doing this in the middle of your workday to get yourself into a peak state...

Mindfulness (15 - 20 minutes)

Focused attention is a crucial component of flow. Thus you’ll want to spend 15 - 20 minutes doing meditation, brain training, or something like HRV training with Heartmath devices...

HeartMath emWave2

 

3.7

Category: Mind Hardware

HeartMath Inner Balance™

 

2.7

Category: Mind Hardware

I’ve reached some very sublime flowstates with cannabis and HRV training (you probably don’t want to get high on weed in the middle of the workday, so maybe try some small doses of CBD oil), as have others and the Heartmath Institute’s website has some interesting published research on HRV and flow.

Music

Is perhaps the original flowstate trigger. You want to listen to focus promoting music while trying to reach flow. I find that Brain.FM is great for this but any holosync-style tunes would work (more or less).

Brain.FM

 

5.0

Category: Apps & Software

What you probably wouldn’t want to listen to is hip-hop or rock music with a lot of lyrics that take a bit of your attention away from what is in front of you. Although, some authors would disagree with me, in Tim Ferriss’s excellent Tools of Titans he interviewed some prolific writers who find that listening to the same song (or album) on repeat for hours and hours powerfully stimulates creative flow.

Skill-Challenge/Clear Goals/Immediate Feedback (10 - 15 minutes)

Immediately before or after (you’ll have to experiment to see what works best for you) the mindfulness practice, you want to spend a little bit of time doing something that takes some skill but is challenging, where you have a clear goal and you receive immediate pass/fail feedback. Some ideas for this...

• Video games - Especially fast-paced video games where you are racing or shooting are conducive to focus; you have a clear goal like winning a race or killing bad guys and you get immediate feedback Obviously you’d want to pick a video game with levels that only last about 10-15 minutes, you don’t want to get sucked into a game that you’re going to want to play for hours. Gamers report that Quake III DeFRaG, Tetris Effect in VR, and the classic Nintendo 64 GoldenEye consistently stimulate flowstate.
• Gambling - There Are a ton of places on the internet where you can play all sorts of gambling games that require focus, there are stakes (you don’t want to lose money!) and you get immediate feedback. You’d want to pick games of skill as opposed to games that entailed a lot of randomness.
• Gravity - In The Rise of Superman, experiencing gravity is a consistent flow trigger among extreme athletes. You’re probably not going to go free-running along the ledges of a skyscraper during your lunch break so you’d want to find a way to experience (or simulate) visceral gravity. You could do this from the safety of your office with a cheap VR headset that you slip your smartphone into.
• Remove Distractions - Finally, to optimize flow you want to minimize distractions. Close browser tabs and windows. Turn off beeping, dinging, or vibrating notifications. Place your smartphone outside of your field of vision and get stuff done!

Do try it, you'll feel amazingly alive!